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We are back with a special edition of Duke Law Life! We asked our staff what they are grateful for, which include their family, friends and awesome coworkers. This special edition features our guest host Hayley! 😁

Hold onto your hats! We’re celebrating 3 years since we launched the LLM Ambassadors at Duke Law! 🌐🎉 “I have loved being an LLM Ambassador this semester,” said Gabriela Nagle Alverio JD/PhD ‘25 said. “It gave me an opportunity to meet some of the incredible LLMs and learn about their experiences practicing law all around the world!” Emiliano Flores Juárez LLM ‘24 said, “Duke’s LL.M. Ambassador Program helped me and other LLMs to get to know more of North Carolina and its people. With two brilliant JDs as ambassadors, the law school experience transcended to not just hitting the law books; but hitting the ice, too. Our ambassadors took us to see an ice hockey game in Raleigh to cheer on the @canes!” Comprised of a mixture of 22 second- and third-year JD students, this semester’s ambassadors helped LLM students with acclimating to a new city, a new school, and, for some, a different way of learning. Paired with groups of 5-8 LLM students, the ambassadors took LLM students on exciting outings ranging from hockey games and ziplining to a hosted BBQ and just grabbing a bite to eat. “The program is a flexible space where you can interact with the people that you usually see daily at law school, but never get the chance to talk about anything outside law school,” Juárez said. “I think the program also helps making friends way smoother as the activities outline the path for the international-based people who make up the group.” The Office of International Studies started the program in direct response to our JD and LLM students request for more opportunities to engage with each other. Drawing inspiration from the success of the JD LEAD Fellows program, Senior Program Coordinator Leslie Allen developed the LLM Ambassadors program and says it’s quickly become a cornerstone of fostering community among our student body. Allen said, “I knew that the end result would be greater community cohesion, more JD and LLM friendship, and an opportunity for both JDs and LLMs to forge connections that will last well beyond graduation.” Join us in celebrating the power of connection and cultural exchange at Duke Law! 🌐🎉

Recently, Duke Law, @ncculawschool & @elonlaw students competed in the 2023 Legal Design Derby to develop human-centered tools for improving access to justice for low-income North Carolinians. The event was co-hosted by the Duke Center for Law & Tech and NCCU’s Tech Law & Policy Center in partnership with @legalaidnc. Check our link in bio to read the full story! "The derby is an opportunity to step outside of the normal law school environment and take on an issue, a challenge that they care about," said DCLT Director and Clinical Professor Jeff Ward. "In this case, it's a question intimately connected to access to legal services for our community." The winning team consisted of Duke Law 1Ls Jorren Biggs and Alex Neumann working with NCCU Law 2L Donna Dodson and NCCU Law 3L Alliah Harrison. Their proposed idea would use generative AI to answer questions for potential clients interested in seeking services. The algorithm behind the AI would be trained using data from questions asked by real people and answered by LANC staff, and answers would be cited to help build trust in the tool. “One challenge that we realized is that a specific solution to a problem can sometimes exacerbate other issues,” Neumann said. “Something we realized pretty early on is that by creating a digital solution, you caused further problems with the urban-rural divide.”